vie en rose
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Love, and life. Matt's certain, more certain that he wants to be, that you only get to have one. (Matt/Elektra, spoilers for 2x13).
**A/N: This fic is a lot of things. For one thing, I've been reading a fantastic** ** _Daredevil_** **fic called "Rescue Flare" by lazarov, which mentions "The Little Prince" by Antoine Saint-Exupery. That is one of my favorite books, but I know it as "Le Petit Prince" in its original French. It has a beautiful love story between the innocent, luminescent little prince and a conflicted and deceptive rose. That dynamic had some parallels, for me, to Matt and Elektra.**

 **The quotes are directly from Saint-Exupery's work, and the translations, except for the last quote, are all mine.**

 ** _Et elle, qui avait travaillé avec tant de précision, dit en bâillant:_**

 ** _-Ah! Je me réveille à peine...Je vous demande pardon...Je suis encore toute décoiffée..._**

 ** _Le petit prince, alors, ne put contenir son admiration:_**

 ** _-Que vous êtes belle!_**

 ** _-N'est-ce pas, répondit doucement la fleur. Et je suis née en même temps que le soleil..._**

 ** _Le petit prince devina bien qu'elle n'était pas trop modeste, mais elle était si émouvante!_**

 ** _-C'est l'heure, je crois, du petit déjeuner, avait-elle bientôt ajouté, auriez-vous la bonté de penser à moi..._**

 _ **Et le petit prince, tout confus, … avait servi la**_

 _And [the flower], who had worked with such diligence [to arrange her petals], yawned and said airily—"Ah! I am barely awake…I beg your pardon…I am still all in disarray."_

 _The little prince, then, could not contain his admiration._

 _"But you are beautiful!"_

 _"Am I not?" the flower answered sweetly. "And I was only just born with the sun."_

 _The little prince saw that she was not overly modest, but so fascinating!_

 _"It's time for breakfast, I believe," she added. "If you would be so kind as to look after me."_

 _And the little prince, all befuddled…served her._

The cold air stings his lips and his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He hasn't heard from Foggy for days. Three or four, maybe, but it feels like an age. And he's happy for Foggy, truly—it's best this way—but the tendons of his throat tighten and clench every times he thinks of it. If this is best, he wonders what best means anymore.

He hasn't heard from Karen at all.

And there isn't anyone left, really, because Stick is just a shadow beside him and Elektra is in the ground at his feet.

 _Orchids_. She wasn't a roses kind of girl, and those were the only kind of flowers he'd thought of, and she'd loved him anyway.

It was no surprise that she had loved him when she was told not to by others, but she'd told herself not to, and even so—

 _Even so, here we are_ , Matt tells himself bitterly. _Here, now and forever_. The words almost sound like a prayer. Almost. He will pray, tonight, when he is alone. He can't pray now. Heaven feels very far away.

When they'd parted ways back in college, he'd gone back to church. Gone to confession, spilled out his sins and bit back the tears that stung with something more than guilt.

For a long time, he was angry, and Foggy knew better than to ask questions. Matt flinched at the wild scent of orchids, and didn't go back to the gym for six months.

He was young, and stupid. He was sorry for his sins, and they were forgiven.

He thought he'd forgotten her.

 ** _Si tu aimes une fleur qui se trouve dans une étoile, c'est doux, la nuit, de regarder le ciel. Toutes les étoiles sont fleuries._**

 _If you love a flower found upon a star, it is pleasant, at night, to gaze at the sky. All the stars are a-flower._

He still had the taste of Karen on his lips when he saw her again, and it brought his world down about his ears.

Karen is what he thinks he wants. Elektra is what he knows he once wanted. He didn't know which one was real, and it made him furious.

It made him afraid.

Elektra lives (lived, oh, God, _lived_ , past tense) off fear. She got too close, smiling lips tracing his jaw. Name whispered in his ear, dares and bets but never promises.

Elektra loved him, but she liked to hear him be the one to promise for tomorrow.

He knows now that that was because she was terrified, and loneliness was not around her so much as it was inside her.

So much darkness, but somehow it was a blind man who brought her light.

 ** _Je n'aurais jamais dû m'enfuir! J'aurais dû deviner sa tendresse derrière ses pauvres ruses. Les fleurs sont si contradictoires! Mais j'étais trop jeune pour savoir l'aimer."_**

 _I should never have left her. I ought to have divined the tenderness behind those paltry ruses. Flowers are so inconsistent—but I was too young to know how to love her._

Matt knows himself pretty well at this point; he's spent a lot of time in his own head. And that means that he knows—knows like breathing, knows like he knew her heartbeat—that he'll spend the rest of his life wishing he'd been a little faster. A little bolder. A little stronger.

And he'll know, too, that if she was here she would laugh at him. _You can't always be the hero, Matthew. No, not even you._

 _Not always_ , he would say. _Just for you. Just when it mattered._

London. They could have gone to London. She would have whispered that she loved him, and they would have kept running as long as they needed to.

He knows, underneath the wild agony of a might-have-been hope that it would never have happened. Elektra stopped running the moment she came back to him. Love does that people—it changes them, and it breaks them.

It's the only thing that matters.

Matt doesn't say much at the graveside. It's like all his words are buried with her.

(She used to love to hear him talk.)

 ** _Quand tu regarderas le ciel, la nuit, puisque j'habiterai dans l'une d'elles, puisque je rirai dans l'une d'elles, alors ce sera pour toi comme si riaient toutes les étoiles._**

 _In one of them I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it shall be that all the stars are laughing when you look at the sky at night._

Love, and life. Matt's certain, more certain that he wants to be, that you only get to have one, because love burns too bright for life and survival is the opposite of sacrifice.

 _Love,_ he thinks. He had that with her, her lips, her eyes, her heart. They both knew it, somewhere secret, all along.

 _Life_ , he thinks. He wanted that with her, wanted a future.

Life and love and—

But _goodness_ came in between. He wanted goodness too, he's always wanted it, for himself and for her, and that, they did have. (If only for a moment, and even if it hurt like it always does.)

He supposes, fingers dusty with the dirt of her grave, that that means their love was true.

Love, they had. Love and goodness and moments, bright as the sunlight he can't see.

But as for life?

She took it all away.


End file.
